


The cracks in the sidewalk

by Antigone_Sycamore



Series: Solace [2]
Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I mean, LOOK AT THEM, One Shot, Post Season 3, Post-Canon, Post-Finale, i did a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-09 04:58:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20504930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antigone_Sycamore/pseuds/Antigone_Sycamore
Summary: The road to recovery is paved with manyalmosts. For both of them.





	1. Chapter 1

The first time she sees him again he squints at her. The same way he used to do all the time when they first met. She fails to hide her smile when she gathers him up in her arms. He smells of earl grey and laundry detergent.

***

It becomes easier after that. More natural. Like hugging her sons or Lucy. Like the sun warming her face on a September afternoon. She won’t deny herself the basic human comfort of someone else’s touch anymore. She can probably count the number of times Hardy’s touched her on one hand. And all the times she’s rebuffed him.

She was grateful, though. For all the times he’s reached out when no one else would. For all the times he got through nonetheless when no one else could. 

They are on safer territory now. Old wounds that never really mend. The both of them always just a step away from the precipice. She feels his fingers brush along her orange windbraker to draw her attention one morning outside the station. Unassuming and barely noticeable. But Ellie notices. Notices how his hand lingers just a little too long. How his fingers grip her coat just a little too tight. 

***

It happens at the end of a long day. They question a suspect in one of the interrogation rooms at the station. A middle-aged man accused of domestic violence when all hell breaks loose. They guy is over the table and at her throat before either of them can do anything about it.

Time ticks by in fractures. Split into increments of eternity before her training as a police officer kicks in and they pull him off of her kicking and screaming. The irony is not lost on her. Hitting just a little too close to home. 

Enough time to split her lip and give her a black eye. But, really, what’s a little blood and torn skin after all of this?

Hardy, of course, is not handling it well. He’s furious. Alternating between shouting orders and fussing over her. Though his hands are gentle when they cup her face on either side. 

***

When he guides her to the car to take her to the hospital later that night she can feel his hand hoover helplessly over the small of her back. He holds her door open for her. His fingers drumming against the cool metal. Not touching but never more than a few centimeters away. 

She feels like shit. Tired and beaten up. She wants to go home and sleep for the next 48 hours. Pull the covers over her head and shut the rest of the world out. It’s unlikely she has a concussion but Hardy insisted on taking her to the emergency room. They had an argument about it, of course, which she only lost because he’s gradually wearing her down. 

***

He sits with her while the nurse stiches up her lip, flinching every time the needle pierces her skin. And suddenly it is not so difficult anymore. She reaches out, takes his hand between hers and holds it tightly in her lap.

Hardy grunts beside her, shifts uneasily in his seat, but doesn’t pull away. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, eyes downcast, like any of this is his fault. Like everything is always his goddamn bloody fault. And her anger ignites like a match, blazing and unexpected, because if there’s one thing she can’t stand, besides him being gentle with her, it’s him taking all the blame.

“I shouldn’t have provoked him,” she says through gritted teeth, lip aching with every word while the young nurse frowns at her – at both of them, really-

“You were just doing your job, Miller.”

“Bloody right I was.”

Hardy squeezes her hand.

“It should have been me.”

“Bloody right it should’ve,” she snaps, agitated now, even more so than before. 

Hardy sighs. His posture deflating visibly on the bench beside her. 

“You can have a go at me once we’re outta here,” he says, Scottish accent thick on every syllable. He looks at her then, brown eyes wide and unguarded. Utterly at odds with his harsh words when he still clutches her hand. 

And it’s not like she hasn’t thought about punching him in the face. In fact, the desire is familiar enough to set her a little more at ease again.

“Yeah, I think that’s _long_ overdue-“__

_ _He smiles at that. Crow’s feet spreading out from his eyes. And if it doesn’t deflate her anger, it at least takes some of the edge away. _ _

_ _Despite everything, there is something boyish about Hardy when he smiles. It happens so rarely that she’s utterly surprised by it every time he does it. It spills through the cracks of his angry and bitter veneer. Much like sunlight through window blinds on a sunny afternoon. Even under the florescent light of an emergency room in the dead of the night, just for the split of a second, it lifts the sadness off of him entirely and she catches a glimpse of the man he once must have been. _ _

_ _It mends and breaks her heart at the same time. _ _

_ _***_ _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. So this fandom _is_ alive then ;-)

***

There is nothing particularly new or special about Hardy caring for her. She knows he’s always cared for her. Physically as well as figuratively. His concern had been evident in the way he’d looked at her after Joe. The way he’s pulled her back from the edge countless times.

***

When she thinks about these days now, the grey and ash she desperately tried to sort through in the days and weeks after Joe’s arrests, Hardy is always there too. He stands out in her memories, firm and solid against the half-light of the setting sun over the cliff – or at least as solidly as a man with a severe heart condition can stand out against the black abyss of a life spiraled out of control. Even right in middle of it all, she’d noticed his gaze linger upon her.

_Hardy’s sluggish form across from her in a dingy yellow ladies room at Wessex court. Hardy’s lean body shifting next to her on a hotel room mattress to pull away from the covers. Hardy dragging her along all the way to Sandbrook while her own life has fallen apart beyond repair. Hardy and his own bloody trauma, staggering alongside her through the woods on unsteady feet. Hardy pushing and pulling her along, simply refusing to let go when she had shut out everyone else._

Trusting her when no-one else would. 

He _really_ was trying. And it had made her feel all the more guilty. Because when she remembers those days now, always just beneath the surface, she knows with dead certainty that on the very day she’s lost everything, she’s also found something. 

***

She’s dozed off in the car and only realizes he’s pulled up in front of his house when he gently opens the passenger seat door of the car.

She gets out without an argument. She’d be more comfortable at home but she’s on enough meds to put out an elephant and it’s the middle of the bloody night. 

„I am not sleeping in your bed,“ she tells him while she brushes past him towards his doorstep on unsteady feet. Hardy only frowns at her over the rim of his glasses, unable to offer any support besides a hand hovering uselessly over her arm when he holds open his door for her.

He makes tea while Ellie asses herself in his downstairs bathroom mirror. She looks awful, bruises purple and swollen against her pale skin.

„Bloody bastard,“ she tells herself in the mirror when she tries to clean away some of the long ago dried blood from her face. 

She’s provided with a sweater and some lose pyjama pants that look way too long when she emerges from the bathroom. 

She’d never admit it to him, but it is comforting – the way he methodically moves through the motions without wavering. Make tea, retrieve sweater, make sure she’s going to be ok. The way he takes over for the both of them when she can no longer stir clearly. She’d do the same for him. She’s _done_ the same for him. 

He hands her a cup of tea while he continuous to frown at her. His fingers brush against hers as he hands her the cup. 

„You look awful,“ he tells her, but his voice is soft, „you should go get some sleep.“

She changes into the sweater and the pants in the bathroom again. It’s a washed out old looking thing with traces of a _Ramones_ print in the front and she can’t believe he has that. Regardless, it is soft against her skin and it smells of earl grey and laundry detergent. There is something intimate in wearing someone else’s cloths and all that- but she thinks they are way past that and it’s just Hardy and his washed out old sweater. Just Hardy and his disgusting stewed tea. 

Besides, she feels ridiculous in his _Ramones_ sweater and probably looks like it too. 

She drops down on his couch with a grunt of exhaustion. She doesn’t feel pain, not really, besides a throbbing ache in her lower lip and a prickly sensation along her skin. 

She feels his gaze on her from across the couch and is immediately annoyed with him. For fussing over her, or not fussing enough, she doesn’t know. Hardy’s always specialized in being too close and too far away at the same time. It makes her smile against her better judgement. The sound bubbles up from beneath the surface before she can stop it. 

He raises an eyebrow over his cup.

“What?”

***

_ Hardy in a suit on the beach, always a little out of place, hair ruffled from the wind, face stern and unreadable, but his brown eyes are gentle, never leaving her face._

Against all odds, these are the memories she remembers most vividly from their time together during the godawful trail and Sandbrook. These are the memories she’s hold on to when nothing else had made sense anymore. 

The way she just couldn’t let him in. The way she couldn’t push him away either. The way he simply didn’t care and stayed by her side anyway. He’s the one bloody person she never managed to shut out entirely. 

Oddly enough, it is only years later that she realizes this is also the time she had first fallen in love with him. Probably would have anyway. Hardy and his stoic demeanor. She didn’t know what floodgates it would have opened if she admitted to any of it. Today she thinks he’s always known anyway. He reads people’s minds for a living after all. Learns their innermost secrets. The very things they won’t admit even to themselves. And he’s bloody good at it too.

***

They both know there will never be a good time for this. No right moment. So it might just be the pain she feels still radiating outward from her lip, or the meds, or her ever present frustration with him.  


“I love you,” she tells him as both of her hands clench around her mug. The words are every bit as much of an accusation as they are a confession. Maybe even more so. _Bloody Hardy and his goddamn insistence_. However, the relief she somehow feels is immediate. 

Hardy just grunts into his cup. His face bears neither surprise nor astonishment. Maybe just a hint of triumph. But his brown eyes are soft around the edges. 

“So, you really are in shock then.”

“Bloody hell, Hardy!” It is her turn to glare at him as her voice rings loudly through his living room. “That is your answer?”

Her swearing elicits another one of his rare smiles. The second one in a night that started out with bloody lips and purple skin. Just a few more scars to add to the ones they already have.

“I’m still not sleeping in your bed,” she snaps defiantly as she settles back into the cushion.

Hardy presses his lips tightly together as he puts his cup down on his coffee table. When he slowly gets up and rounds the table to sit next to her, Ellie can’t help but being reminded of the very first time he’s done that. Rounding a table to sit _beside_ her. It’s a silly thing to remember at that very moment but the image flashes across her mind as clear as daylight.

_Hardy’s weary face across form her in the interrogation room. Hardy glaring at her from the passenger seat of her car. Hardy’s hand hovering over her arm as he escorts her up the stairs to the court room. Hardy yelling at her, telling her to harbor her anger instead of letting it go. Hardy’s face lighting up in a hospital bed as he snaps at her. Hardy who’s just refused to let go.___

_Hardy._

He peels the mug from her hands and puts it down on the coffee table. His eyes are serious but there is a slight glimmer to them – for once there’s no trace of his usual exasperation with her.

_ _“You know-,” he says his knee gently nudging hers, “you’ll one day have to stop fighting me on this.”_ _

_ _***_ _

_ _He doesn’t say it back when he tugs her into his bed later that night. She knows he wouldn’t; not when everything is so raw and so close to the surface. But it is there, evident in the way he kisses her eyebrow and tugs the covers up to her chin. Apparent in the way his fingers linger without hesitance now and when she drifts off into sleep Ellie knows that something has finally been resolved. _ _

_ _***_ _


End file.
